


now, we only own our hell

by nosecoffee



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alana POV, Alana centric, Alana has telekinesis and can see into the past, Angst, Blatant Hurt, Changelings, Connor's magic is air, Description Heavy, Dialogue Sparse, Evan's magic is plants, F/F, Faeries - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Jared is a changeling, Jared's magic is technology, M/M, Magic, Magic AU, Mermaids, Plot Twist, The Author Regrets Everything, Zoe does stuff with stars, hidden identities, illegal magic au, im so self indulgent, the core five are all magic, vague reference of faeries, vague reference of mermaids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 01:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12070629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: Alana tries to hide what she is.But it's really hard.There's only so many glamours she can use to hide the physical imperfections and giant arrows screaming "witch". There's only so much she can do to protect herself.(Or, an AU in which magic is illegal, and the kids are trying not to be arrested for existing)





	now, we only own our hell

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Buy The Stars" by Marina and the Diamonds
> 
> I don't know?????? (This is one of my weaker pieces, I'm afraid.)
> 
> (While you're here, though, why not check out some amazing fanart of this fic, done my @metric-scales on Tumblr? Link below.)
> 
> https://metric-scales.tumblr.com/post/165625410750/magic-boi-connor-murphy-based-off-of-this-fic-by

Everyone knows magic is illegal.

Gosh, even speaking about it is wrong, unless you're doing the unit on "magic and it's dangers" in elementary school.

There are some places in the world, Alana learns, where magic is welcomed and celebrated. Those places expand and become more and more popular as years go on.

Alana is well aware that magic is illegal.

If she breathed a word to anyone about it, she'd be placed in a holding cell until her dad could come and pick her up.

Apparently no one in town ever learnt the phrase "snitches get stitches".

Alana tries to hide what she is.

But it's really hard.

There's only so many glamours she can use to hide the physical imperfections and giant arrows screaming "witch". There's only so much she can do to protect herself.

Her mother taught her well, in that respect. What it meant to be a witch in a community like this, in a world that condemned her very existence.

Her brother, Jordan, he's as far from magic as can be.

Her father knows, though, and he seems to have accepted the fact that she can never truly embrace who she is, especially not in a town, a place like this.

So, they don't tell Jordan, and they hide that world from him, and her father is the only one who can see through her glamours, anyway, so there's no real reason to be frightened.

~

The thing about mages is that, if their glamours are weak, you can spot them from a mile away.

Mages marks manifest in the most acute of ways.

Pointed ears for nature (or to point out a changeling). (Faeries don't take Normal children. They prefer mages. Faeries don't need to use magic to see through glamours, faeries just know.) Scales for water and rain (or to show cursed mermaids who made one too many bad deals).

Alana's mark is her eyes. One is half-orange, half-green, one is half-blue, half-red. Her glamour makes them look brown.

Alana's mark is her hair. Twisted red into the black of it. She blames it on streaks, but uses a glamour to hide the way the red streaks pulse like they're full of light.

Alana's mark is her lips. Splattered with blue. She uses a glamour to make it look like vitiligo.

No one suspects.

No one thinks that perfect little Alana Beck could ever have the power to see into the past, anybodies past, and the power to move objects with a flick of her wrist, the movement of her eye, a command that is only heard in her own head.

Alana can see through glamours easily, and tear them down, expose them, should she wish to.

But, Alana would never. Alana isn't so cruel.

Alana would never condemn someone who is just like her.

~

You'd think that the Murphy's would be the most Normal family, ever.

Sweet, and rich, and suburban, and _Normal._

Except that Connor, their son, he has a smidge of brown in his blue eyes. Except that Connor makes wind blow when he's angry, and stifles the air when he's sad, and speaks like oxygen gets trapped in his throat, but he can still breathe clearly. He drinks strange coloured beverages out of an old, glass Coke bottle. She watches him trade them for baggies of weed, trades them to men with pointed teeth and long tongues.

Except that Zoe, their daughter, her eyes are purple. And so is her hair. And the scribbled and scrawled stars and planets on her jeans and shoes, they sparkle and move and revolve and they come alive from the tip of her pen, forming constellations that appear in the sky only a few nights later. Her glamour is powerful, and heavy and guarded, but Alana is more powerful.

The Murphy's are the most Normal family in town.

Except that their children can do things children shouldn't.

~

Jared Kleinman shouldn't surprise her the way he does. It's just that she doesn't expect him to be one of them.

(He shouldn't have surprised her. His ears are pointed, even if only a little. She should have known. Should have warned him.)

His glamour hides the conductive traces that glow different shades of blue down his neck and his arms and his legs. His glamour hides the electricity that sparks at his fingertips.

He causes three blackouts during his schooling career.

He thinks she doesn't notice.

Jared's hair sticks up, like someone rubbed a balloon on his head, when he's angry.

His smile is like a lightbulb, sudden and bright.

Jared Kleinman should be a Normal kid, but he's not. The Kleinman's are Normal, is all. There are no glamours on their house, no glamours on their skin.

Only Jared is different, and Jared is hiding from his very family. Alana doesn't know what that must be like. She wants to help, but she really doesn't know how.

His words are like lightening, when he means them, and they hurt just as much.

~

Evan Hansen is really like the cherry on top.

There are streaks of green at his lips, like vines, and they are the same kind of streaks that curl around his ears and near the edges of his eyes. It snakes down his neck in gentle, curling patterns, and dots his nose. It curls around his fingers and traces his palms. His eyes are green, deep, deep forest green, but the glamour makes them blue.

Alana understands why he's so fascinated with plants, because they perk up when he's around.

Because they seem to lean towards him like he is sun and soil and water all at the same time. He prods them, gently, with the tips of his fingers, and they stand up straight, growing better and faster with his well-meaning influence.

He can heal plants, grow them in seconds from a seedling to fully grown.

(His mother is a healer, too, a different kind. She works with lost causes and people on the brink of death. She is lightness and darkness. She brings people back from the edge, or gives them the nudge into oblivion. She makes decisions, and never gets caught. Her blonde hair is streaked with black, and her eyes are white with black spots. She is beautiful and terrifying.)

Alana thinks Evan's maybe trying to live up to his mother's legacy.

Alana thinks Evan needs one of his own.

~

One of them puts up the flyer. She doesn't know which one it is.

Heavily glamoured, carefully worded, defensive to the last.

A cry for help, a call for any mages in the area.

And Alana is aware it could be a trap. Lord knows the cops have used magic to aid them in their searches, before.

Alana conjures up a powerful glamour to wear to the overgrown, abandoned orchard, that weekend, and she goes.

She sees Evan Hansen, not quite as careful as her, use the trees to travel, nimbly, to the meeting spot, flyer in hand.

She finds Jared Kleinman, completely out of his element, nervous, defensive, in the clearing. He and Evan nod to each other, curtly.

Alana doesn't show herself, just yet, still wary that it could be a trap.

Zoe Murphy comes crunching along the path, followed, sullenly, by her brother, their glamours absent. They're being obvious. They're being careless, and reckless, and stupid.

Alana can't help but stare.

They all band together, and that's when Alana deems it safe enough to strip down the glamour and emerge.

They all freeze up when she steps out of the tree line, but relax when they register her eyes., her hair, her lips.

After that, it's like an AA meeting. They all say when they can do, what their marks are. They all look thoroughly intrigued when she says she's telekinetic, and can see the past.

~

They stay there until after dark, and Zoe points out all the stars she's created, all the constellations. They seem to shine in her amethyst eyes, dots of white and yellow and blue, making her look blind, but also like their universe exits in her eyes, and her eyes only.

Alana tells her how beautiful they are.

~

Zoe takes her to the burnt down mill, a week later, and, under the stars, Alana presses their foreheads together, and shows Zoe her forgotten years. Zoe cries with happiness at the sheer joy there was in those times.

She holds Alana close when it's done, and knows Zoe's never felt anything quite like the rush of forgotten memories.

Alana does it to Jordan when he has nightmares. When he tosses and turns in the next room she presses their foreheads together and paints those nice memories into the back of his eyelids. She listens carefully, until his breathing evens out, again. He dreams peacefully those nights.

Alana does it to her father when he drinks too much and starts crying over the pictures of her mother on the mantlepiece. She whispers "I know, I know", traces a finger along the lines in his hand, shows him the times they picnicked in the orchard, or went on road trips, times before her mother was too sick for even Heidi Hansen to save.

Zoe whispers her thanks through her tears, presses them close, but not for more memories.

Her lips taste of salt, and chapstick, and Alana is floating.

~

She does it for Jared when he breaks down in the computer lab. Shows him images of flowers clenched in his fist, the feeling of flying that moment after leaping off a swing, holding his breath underwater.

She shows him the childhood he shouldn't remember, the childhood he forgot he'd had, faded into a life he shouldn't have to hide in.

And he calms, the lightning blue that lit his conductive traces so brightly, fading to sky blue.

Jared hugs her.

~

Alana does it for all of them, supplying them with much needed comfort and safety in their lowest, neediest moments.

(Connor sees four leaf clovers, sees toy planes and five-dollar Spiderman costumes. Evan sees toy trucks and his mother hugging him close and old X-Men comics.)

In return, Jared gifts her a mechanical pencil with endless lead. Zoe gives her a mobile of the planets that actually spin on their axis's with stars hanging on strings between them, to hang in her room. Evan hands her a plant that he swears will live forever, to put on her windowsill. Connor hands her a Dr Pepper can, filled with something dark green, and nods to her in that passive aggressive way he does, sometimes, and when she drinks it, she feels good.

She sleeps calmly, that night.

They work out an odd friendship between the five of them, even if there is kisses on the side from Zoe, and she sees Evan and Connor hold hands sometimes, or sees Jared talk to other people.

They are a group, now. Aware of each other, and protective.

~

It turns out that Jared isn't careful enough. It turns out Alana wasn't cautious enough.

Jared gets sent away, after his family realise he's a changeling, and what he can do.

Alana never sees him, again.

(She hears, through the town gossip her father delivers her, that the Kleinman's are mortified, and upset, that they lost their real boy. How he could be dead for all they know. Alana's bpnever felt so malicious.)

~

Heidi is caught. The glamour is stripped from her and the police get a warrant to search her house.

Evan is arrested, alongside her.

They decide to be lenient with him. They say that if he names three more people, three more mages, they'll let him go.

Evan refuses.

Their house is left empty.

(Alana hears whispers about how unfortunate it is that Heidi was a witch after all. How unfortunate it was that her son could do such horrifying things. How no one suspected.)

~

Suspicion rounds on the town, like a snake eating its own tail.

The Murphy's are found out, and not too long after that, skip town.

(No word is left for her. No note. She didn't even get to say goodbye.)

Alana is sure she's next.

Except her glamour is too good, her father too careful, Jordan too oblivious.

And no one would even think to accuse smart little Alana Beck of being a witch.

How could she be? There's nothing off about her. Not in the way the others were.

Alana never hears from any of them, again.

She moves to one of those sunny, respectful, accepting places. The people there, the witches and mages and faeries, they tell her what becomes of those who are caught. They tell her how their memories are wiped, how binding glamours are set on them, to hide what they are from themselves. Alana weeps for what must have become of Jared and of Heidi and Evan. Weeps for not knowing what could have happened to Zoe and Connor, and their parents who wouldn't give themselves over.

She tries to live out her days, pretending she hadn't lost some powerful mages and good friends.

Pretending she doesn't hope they died, because the way they'd have to live, their secrets exposed, is too horrifying to think of.

She's a huge activist for the freedom of magic, and has hope that one day people will see the good, change their minds.

There is no immediate change, and no word about the friends she'd had, the memories that still swirled in her mind when she thought of them.

She used to dream she'd be in that accepting place, and now she is, but was the cost too heavy?

 

**Fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please feel free to drop me a comment, letting me know how you feel about this/what you liked, and/or leave a kudos, because they are greatly appreciated.
> 
> Hmu on Tumblr @nose-coffee. If you want more quality works, check out @ls201 and @HamiltonTrash.
> 
> Thanks!


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